Prescription controlled substance misuse, abuse, and diversion are major public health problems in the United States. Opioids are one example of such a substance. In 2013, prescription opioids were responsible for more deaths than from suicide and motor vehicle accidents combined. Despite this fact, the number of prescription opioids in the United States continues to rise due to healthcare provider's perceived benefits of opioids for chronic symptom, decreased social stigma associated with prescription opioids, and healthcare provider fear of undertreating symptoms resulting in poor healthcare provider satisfaction scores and litigation. The major challenges for healthcare providers are reducing opioid misuse, abuse, and drug diversion while ensuring patient safety and therapeutic response to opioid therapy.
The American Society of Interventional Pain Healthcare providers' opioid guideline in management of chronic non-cancer pain recommends pill counting by healthcare providers to reduce misuse and drug diversion by ensuring that patients are taking the medication at the agreed upon dosing and timing, and that there are no missing pills suggesting theft or sale of opioids. However, performing pill counting for all patients is resource and time intensive for medical practices. As a result, pill counting is performed randomly, infrequently, or not at all.
There is no device in the market that meets all the needs described above. Medication event monitor systems have improved the health-related outcomes (i.e., lowered blood pressure, reduced hospital and emergency room visits) of patients with hypertension, heart failure, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and epilepsy by improving medication adherence with audible and visual reminders and recording the date and time of every bottle cap opening. The disadvantages of such systems are that patients can take multiple pills with each bottle cap opening, misuse the prescription, overdose, and have pills stolen. Current systems cannot prevent theft, dispense one pill at a time, count pills, or modulate dispensing frequency as per the prescription. As such, there is no way of monitoring medication adherence using existing technology.
From the foregoing discussion, it can be appreciated that it would be desirable to have a system and method for controlling and monitoring the dispensation of medication.